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Pirate Party Becomes a Registered Political Party In Australia
First time accepted submitter norpy writes "The Australian branch of the pirate party has today announced that their registration as a political party has been successful. According to the announcement the party will now turn its attention to selection of candidates and development of policies for the upcoming federal election. 'Organising and validating a membership database to then submit to the AEC for the purposes of registration is a daunting task. Fortunately, we had a team of volunteers who were prepared to spend many weekends ensuring that the list we sent to the AEC was entirely valid, and I thank them for their effort,' said Brendan Molloy, Secretary of Pirate Party Australia."
The Norwegian Pirateparty got enough signatures andis also now a legal party that will be in the 2013 election.
Shooters party, pirate party and KAP, now i need to make a decision! Good thing we have preferential voting, looks like i'm going to have to number below the line for the table cloth vote.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party
Don't worry, no sane Australian will be voting for them.. As an Australian software developer I assure you I'm all for sensible, realistic IP protection. (But no more than is necessary to reward innovation / creativity.)
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Care to name a political party not full of thieves? Maybe starting with some piracy and working backwards is the way.
It's going to be someone lazy. Why not an Australian? What are you? Prejudiced?
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/conroy-named-internet-villain-of-the-year-20090713-di8q.html
They're only wasted in winner-takes-all systems, which suck.
Not all Aussie developers are sane (can't be helped, too much sun). I'm a bit torn between voting them or the greens; for now, I'll go back polishing that OSS software I'm working on.
I'll be voting for them. IT's about time we have a different party in power that has decent policy.
Please, under British common law, I believe it is not stealing if you do not intend to permanently deprive.
I don't mind paying a reasonable price for ebooks but why are they twice the price at Amazon US than Amazon UK.
(Disclaimer; Sample size of 1 (one))
And why the 50% markup on a number of things, such as software, sold here.
A number of Australians, no doubt crazed from the heat will vote for someone whose agenda is to deal with these questions.
They have no hope in hell of winning a house of representatives seat and it would have to be a cold day in hell for them to win a senate seat. Plenty of loonies run every year. Why should we care about this mob? Slashdot - News for nobody, stuff that doesn't matter.
No, the party of thieves is actually called "Labour Party", and other times "Liberal Party" or even "National Party". The only party not focussing on actually stealing from their constituents on behalf of politicians and corporates seems the misnomed "Pirate Party"
In other words, the Party of Thieves. How admirable.
I didn't know the RIAA or the MPAA were a political party :O
As another software developer, I'd vote for them.
I grow quite tired of other people making the assumption that every 'creator' favors copyright.
Why not "The Computer Party"?
... the kids running it might realise that adults who have to work for a living have more important things to worry about than whether they can download music and video for free. You know, minor things like healthcare, education, the economy etc etc...
No one likes Tony or Julia, but they vote Labor or LNP because "We have always done it that way." How do you convince people to do something different?
Yeah , and the only thing that sucks more is pathetic coalition politics that happens in a lot of europe which means nothing radical or important ever gets done because the governing parties can't agree.
Remember - nothing innovative was ever designed by a committee.
I try to stay out of these discussions and I'll keep the question neutral but I'm curious what people see as the goal of things like the Pirate Party? Defunding movies, music and software seems counterproductive so what is the solution? If it's a party then it has to have goals? I know the dream is the end of copyrights and the free exchange of all information but it's an unrealistic goal so what is the compromise since in sense the goal of politics is compromise? I figure if we're going to cover the subject yet again there should be more interesting discussion than devolving into the standard "Piracy, good", "Copyright, bad" posts. The goal should be discussing solutions or the whole thread becomes redundant. FYI I'm not trying to troll here it's a legitimate question and an opening to offer sensible options.
In OZ the "labour party" is spelt "Labor" http://www.alp.org.au/ They must be dyslexic! It's supporters don't seem to notice the spelling mistake perhaps it is an indicator of their intelligence.
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
In other words, the Party of Thieves. How admirable.
Chill, mate. No Aussie is going to steal that black hole you are creating in your locker.
Got some links to any other "creations" that you're afraid of being stolen? Or are you just "rhetorically whinging" around?
S'riously?
Looks to me as an acceptable orthography for the word.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Because there's no difference between any of the candidates and therefore the only reason to vote for ANY of them is for single issue elements.
And if there's a close election where a seat was won or lost by a thousand votes, TPP getting several thousand votes will show where either one can make a difference. If those votes had gone to THEM, they'd have won.
PS why can't you download public domain music and video for free? And where do you get your free interenet access from?
The Greens are rising in power because the major two are seen as pathetic, and voters are looking for the most sane party to fill this gap. Unfortunately the closest thing we have had to 'sane', is the Greens. While some of their policies are good, they are on a whole batshit crazy and is not acceptable option to most people, so they fall back onto the major two.
With The Pirate Party, if you just get past the name and actually look at the policies, they are not that bad.
Under two-party preferred system, their votes will probably be funnelled to the Greens, which would then be funnelled to Labor. At least it will be a start and show that the major two are falling in popularity.
"Not like the brazen parties of media fame,
With grasping hands astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, downunder beaches shall stand
A mighty party with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lighting, and its name
Party of Pirates. From her beacon website
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild policies command
The ether-bridged harbor that the noosphere frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your hackers, your thieves,
Your anonymous masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your copyrighted shore,
Send these, the privacyless, TOS whacked to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
As an Australian software developer I have joined the pirate party and have learnt a lot from them in the process. The current 70 years of copyright is far more than is necessary to protect investment in creating intellectual property. Also, it is about much more than just copyright - its protecting online freedom of speech, fighting mandatory data retention which is a step towards reversing the presumption of innocence to presumption of guilt where they just havnt found the crime yet, and which puts too much information about your daily (for many of us) life at risk of being stolen by online criminals for the years it sits there. The current system of warrants is adequate to keep the system honest but there are those who are seeking to weaken those provisions in order to 'speed up' the system. This leaves the system open to corruption. The police say the more data retention and the more surveillance powers they have the better, which is of course a true statement for them but there needs to be someone to bring the counter argument to the table to ensure fair balance and maintain our rights. This is a very good step towards finding that balance.
Let me play devils advocate here, but the end game is surely a good copyright system where the creator gets paid WITHOUT MASS SURVEILLANCE, OPPRESSIVE CRIMINALIZATION OF PEOPLE, SECRET DEALS OUTSIDE OF DEMOCRACY etc.
See, when the RIAA and MPAA got their way, they got DMCA. This had 2 parts, legal protection for DRM, and ISP immunity.
The DRM never worked, if it ever could have worked, then it wouldn't have needed legal protection. The ISP immunity has been used by every download site as a means to legal infringement and is what's killing them now.
So Pirate Party and their ilk are really the balancing of the extreme pro-copyright lobby with an extreme the other way.
Can I add, a necessary backlash.
IMHO, most of digital distribution is in place, what missing is the money flow.
1. Track IP addresses and what torrents they've downloaded, this is already done, torrents are monitored.
2. Let users visit a site and see what they have been recorded downloading against their IP address.
3. Offer a deal, click which downloads you admit to, and pay a reasonable buy price, e.g. $10 a DVD, $20 a BluRay. to clear any liability for it.
4. Get your digital distribution set up, offer them upcoming DVDs at a discount, $8 or $7. They're now customers, treat them as such.
5. Still the piracy problem, well pick a few of the worst offenders and sue. NOT anyone who has paid, people who've paid nothing. Do this for 2 years.
6. Still a piracy problem after that? Pass a law to let the ISP collect the fee from the pirates, or ISPs further down the chain. (ISPs will resists this like crazy, but if you've done steps 1-5 it may not be necessary).
7. Enjoy a healthy market, with some piracy, because we shouldn't lose democracy over copyright, or freedom of speech over copyright.
There are no wasted votes in democracy. If you have wasted votes you are doing it all wrong.
I'm a creator, and I'm in favor of copyright. That is both for open source projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen, and for proprietary projects, where the copyright keeps my work from being stolen.
:) Let's just say my IP protections don't feel very threatened by this group of crackpots.
I guess we'll let democracy decide.
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You realize copyright protects OSS software? Check my homepage if you think to be in favor of IP I must be anti-OSS..
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They are in the United States - it's called the Democrat-Republican Party, also known as the Corporate Party.
I am officially gone from
Have you read the Pirate Party's submission regarding copyright review, or their submission regarding patent reform? Do you have specific points of disagreement other than just implying that it is not sensible?
Keep posting those. That's your job.
Australia has preferential voting, there are no wasted votes unless you deliberately fill out your ballot wrong.
A political system that prevents politicians from doing radical things, and you think that is bad?
They think there's no such thing as Public Domain and never should be.
Then again, Viol8 is a self-obsessed shithead who thinks the entire world should be as they decide it should be.
Yeah , and the only thing that sucks more is pathetic coalition politics that happens in a lot of europe which means nothing radical or important ever gets done because the governing parties can't agree.
It's not quite so simple as that. One mathematical definition of political power is the number of winning coalitions a player can join. Given a significant number of parties with none dominant, very small fringe parties can often find themselves in a "kingmaker" position, allowing them to promote more radical policies than the majority of the electorate would favor.
Take the current UK coalition government. The Conservatives have a plurality of seats (306) in the House of Commons, and have two choices for coalition partners, Labour (257) or the Liberal Democrats (57). Suppose the Conservatives had a dozen more seats. This could potentially put the fourth largest party, the nationalist/unionist Democratic Union Party from Northern Ireland (8 seats) in a position to form a winning coalition with the Conservatives, effectively giving this small party equal power to the much larger Labour and LibDem parties -- they can all join in exactly one winning coalition. The Conservatives on the other hand could form coalitions with any of the next three smaller parties (discounting absurd coalitions with anti-union parties like Sinn Féin and the Scottish Nationalist Party).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think a moderately-libertarian party with an IP focus and a "We don't give a shit about that either way" attitude toward divisive issues could do pretty well in the USA right now. With both parties polarizing toward the extreme, moderates really don't have to go. IP reform doesn't sell very well with our national attention span problem, so I'd work the "pirate" angle pretty heavily. Maybe have some signs printed up that say "Scurvey Crew Ahead," get a parrot and you'll be fielding a presidential candidate by 2015! And once you pick up some seats in the house, you can start an effort to plunder Harry Reid's booty! Arr!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The Harry Potter books are Open Source. You can clearly read the actual expressive content that the book entirely is derived from with your imagination (as opposed to a computer, as with software).
This doesn't mean you get to make your own Harry Potter books.
So why hide the source code?
If there's no source code with the binary, the binary is NOT EXPRESSIVE and therefore INVALID FOR COPYRIGHT.
So, rather than go as we used to, for no copyright on binaries or source code, we can compromise on no copyright on binaries without source code.
I'm a creator also; I write and sell software.
You're being foolish. There's a reason why it's distributors who get rich and not creators. Copyright, pretty much by definition, rewards copiers (=distributors and marketers) in proportion to the numbers of copies sold, not to the creators in proportion to the worth of the work and the link between the two is much more tenuous than you seem to believe. If you as a creator get in bed with the distributors/marketers they have all the power and will take almost all the money and if you don't get in bed with them you will not be distributed widely. There are exceptions of course but that's the way to bet.
Also, you automatic assumption that current copyright is "the one true way" is also silly - copyright is a creation of the mind and is it is currently legally defined is only one of an infinite number of possibilities. You really need to expand your horizons.
Modded down? Seriously? OK let me rephrase that:
Nobody will give a shit unless they go on about stopping the boats.
Same guy here.
I guess we'll let democracy decide.
I don't have my hopes up. When it comes to things such as rights, people can be awfully idiotic. Look at the TSA and the Patriot Act in the US, for example. Copyright is no different than trading freedom for safety, but it's just a different kind of safety, and only for certain people. Any sane 'democracy' would not allow this to happen, but sadly, most people are foolish and naive when it comes to government.
You really need your lifetime + 50 years of protection?
The Pirate Party also needs to add to is't agenda/policy to show it supports artists (to aid public perception)
with the initiatives like the indi bundle and such http://blog.bittorrent.com/2012/07/23/its-time-to-rewrite-the-future-of-the-entertainment-industry/
No, but I need more than 5.
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Well suggest how to improve copyright, rather than tear down the only thing that rewards us for our work, and I'll "expand my horizons". Right now I don't see any of that.
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And the conservatives call themselves the Liberal Party...
Well suggest how to improve copyright, rather than tear down the only thing that rewards us for our work, and I'll "expand my horizons". Right now I don't see any of that.
The only thing? Nonsense. How about getting paid for your time amongst many others? There are an infinite number of possibilities and the fact that you won't even consider them is telling.
Just as some obvious starts reducing the time period (as the PP proposes), reducing the scope (e.g. fair use much wider, separating so-called moral rights, de-criminialize etc.), reducing the hiding/secrecy (e.g. Hollywood acounting - far too easy to hide massive scams with "IP" so have much stricter transparency rules with any money associated with IP), taxing DRM (artificial scarcity and market manipulation should be paid for) and reducing the penalties (copying is not stealing no matter how much you wish it was). There are many possibilities.
Troll, maybe,
Wasted because narrow focus parties often do deals in order to achieve their narrow goals, and so become a de facto part of the major parties. maybe there should be a rule in parliament that says that a party can't vote on matters for which they don't have a policy? or you may as well just shut your eyes and tick any box on the ballot paper.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
How about getting paid for your time amongst many others?
So we should be rewarded in fewer ways? We should only be rewarded if our IP can be protected due to the fact that it can't be copied (e.g. in writing business applications)?
Just as some obvious starts reducing the time period (as the PP proposes), reducing the scope (e.g. fair use much wider, separating so-called moral rights, de-criminialize etc.), reducing the hiding/secrecy (e.g. Hollywood acounting - far too easy to hide massive scams with "IP" so have much stricter transparency rules with any money associated with IP), taxing DRM (artificial scarcity and market manipulation should be paid for) and reducing the penalties (copying is not stealing no matter how much you wish it was). There are many possibilities.
All things which dilute protection of IP, and will make it harder to reward content creators. That's an improvement only for certain people, and only in the short-term. No thanks.
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